


History

by Neeks



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M, Female Sam Seaborn, Friendship, Genderswap, Oblivious, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Smart but so stupid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27254644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neeks/pseuds/Neeks
Summary: Josh and Sam had history.They met while she was working as a staffer for some congressman the summer before her third year of law school and he was the floor manager for the House Minority Whip.Note: The non-con tag refers to a sexual assault scene (not graphically described at all) involving Sam (not because of Josh). Please don't read this fic, or skip over that part if it makes you uncomfortable or might cause you pain. Honestly, writing it was unintentional, and was a way for me to process some stuff for myself.
Kudos: 20





	History

**Author's Note:**

> I am so sorry I don't know what this is and I just needed to get it out of my brain. Some of it is venting for me and a way to remotely process my experiences I guess (we love ~trauma~). I couldn't get the idea of a female Sam out of my head, and honestly, I always thought that he and Josh secretly loved each other on the show anyways. So sorry about the writing, it was not proof read at all and was written at a demonic hour. Anyways, this is a horrible butchering of Aaron Sorkin's creation, and nothing belongs to me.

Josh and Sam had history.

* * *

They met while she was working as a staffer for some congressman the summer before her third year of law school and he was the floor manager for the House Minority Whip.

It was a sunny day. Josh had a meeting with a Senator and had surprisingly arrived at his office early. What was also surprising was the woman who was already in the Senator’s office, pointing out something that she didn’t agree with in legislation he was sponsoring.

“How can you let this be in here?” she said, gesturing wildly. “This is just another loophole that big oil companies will exploit, basically negating the entire point of this bill! You aren’t getting anything substantive done with this, and you know it, you just want to look like you care about the environment to your voters while pandering to the companies so that you can make some money.”

“Sam, I understand, but—” the Senator stopped trying to justify his actions to the intern, or whoever she was, upon seeing Josh in the doorway. “Josh, come on in!” the Senator greeted him warmly, probably trying to cover up the embarrassment he felt at having someone see him being chastised by a young staffer who was obviously more intelligent than him.

Josh saw the woman turn, disappointment and anger turning her blue eyes to steel as she walked towards the door, her long black ponytail swinging behind her. She was special.

After his meeting he tracked her down and asked her to lunch.

* * *

Josh was right, Samantha, or Sam as she insisted on being called, was special. He knew he would like her when he first witnessed her berate the weak-willed Senator who was her boss because of his unwillingness to actually address issues. He took her to lunch because he was intrigued.

He didn’t expect that they would almost instantly become friends, but then again, why would things ever go as Josh expected them to? They just made sense to each other. She was as smart as he was, they understood each other, and it was the sort of thing that was meant to be. Within a month, the people who knew them stopped thinking of them as separate entities and started understanding that they came as a package deal. They became Sam and Josh, a phrase uttered so smoothly and with such frequency by their colleagues and friends that it became one word, “SamandJosh,” because where one went, the other followed.

That summer, practically any moment that they weren’t working, they spent in each other’s company. They talked shop, went to bars with friends, explored D.C., and argued with each other just because they could. Josh lost more often than not, Sam had a way with words.

There were rumors, because it was D.C. after all, and when are there not rumors, but neither of them cared. They spent that summer getting to know each other better than anyone else knew them, developed their own little “isms” and things. It was glorious and golden and beautiful.

And then, summer ended. Sam went back to finish up at Duke and Josh became the Democratic Legislative Director for the House of Representatives.

They kept in touch, emailing each other at random hours and calling each other almost every night and sending each other stupid things in the mail. They adapted their friendship to work long distance, and although they could have easily drifted apart, how could they when they made so much sense together?

Josh learned to talk Sam over the phone down during her anxiety attacks. Sam learned to listen to Josh’s rants about stupid Republicans who he thought wanted to watch the world burn. They learned, and it wasn’t the same as being with each other in person, but they managed. Perhaps they got even closer during their time apart because they learned to be each other’s lifelines even when they weren’t physically there for each other.

* * *

Sam had called him and invited him to her graduation, her voice uncharacteristically weak, as if she thought he might not want to go. Of course, Josh was offended at the very thought, and reassured her that, “Yes, of course I’ll be there. I’m gonna be the loudest, most embarrassing person there, and you’re going to regret inviting me.”

He delivered on the first part of his promise, cheering embarrassingly loudly when her name was called and she took the stage to give her perfectly written Valedictorian speech. But, she would never regret inviting him. Throughout the entire ceremony, she smiled so wide that her cheeks hurt, eyes sparkling every time she made eye contact with him in the audience.

He was the first person she hugged when it was over, and it was the first time in about a year that they had seen each other in person. He watched with pride as she accepted congratulations from her professors, friends, and even her parents, who were still bitter about the fact that she had grown up to be a Democratic lawyer instead of a Republican socialite.

She forced him to go to dinner with her parents that night, and even though their initial impression of him wasn’t great (he was a Democrat after all), they warmed up to him when they realized that this was the Josh their daughter couldn’t shut up about. They spent the evening bonding over their mutual love of Sam, telling crazy stories, and eating obscenely expensive food.

Her parents retired to their hotel room, the long day catching up to them, but Sam and Josh talked for hours, savoring every second of their limited time together. It was around one in the morning when Josh asked her to go to his room with him, “Not like that you perv!”

They stumbled upstairs, slightly tipsy from the wine at dinner. When they entered the hotel room, Josh just stood there and did that thing where he fidgeted with his hands and looked at his shoes until Sam couldn’t take it anymore. “Well, get on with it.”

He ran a hand through his hair in deliberation and turned away from her abruptly. Before she could ask what he was doing, he had pulled out a medium-sized box, and was holding it out to her.

“If you’re just going to stand there and not appreciate my incredible gift, maybe I’ll keep it,” Josh said with a smirk as he watched her eyes widen in surprise.

“You shouldn’t have gotten me anything, whatever it is, I don’t need it!” Sam exclaimed, feeling slightly guilty that he had spent money on a gift for her in addition to paying for plane tickets.

“You haven’t even opened it yet, and you’re already passing judgement? Now I’m definitely keeping it.”

“Oh fine, give it,” Sam conceded, smiling at his antics.

He watched as surprise overtook her features once again. She ran her fingers over the elegant leather briefcase, tracing the S.N.S. subtly etched into it. “I don’t even know what to say,” she breathed.

“The great Sam Seaborn, speechless? I never thought I’d see the day.”

She just stared at him in response, not quite believing that he had been the one to get her such a perfect gift. Her parents had given her a designer handbag, holding onto the hope that their daughter might move back and take her place in the elite social scene they frequented. But Josh, he had given her a briefcase, her very first briefcase.

It was Josh’s turn to be surprised when Sam finally looked up at him and he saw her eyes filled with unshed tears. He knew the gift meant a lot to her, just as she knew that him giving her something like that meant a lot to him.

“See, I was expecting ‘Oh goodness Josh, it’s so beautiful, you are the greatest friend in the history of the world.’”

“Shut up,” Sam said as she came closer to him, “I love it Josh, thank you so much, truly.”

She hugged him, and they both stood there holding each other for a while, and neither would later admit that both of them had cried a little bit.

* * *

Sam passed the bar exam with flying colors (obviously) and immediately accepted a job offer at Dewey Ballantine. Josh stayed in D.C. (obviously) but they were only a few hours apart by train, and they always made time for each other on the phone.

Sam worried about Josh, he was running himself into the ground, working himself to the bone to push through legislation. Josh worried about Sam, he saw how her spirit flagged and her idealism faltered as she wrote foolproof legal documents. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to be in D.C., he thought that it was where she belonged. But, they prevailed. Josh became a Floor Director for the Senate and was gaining even more recognition as one of the sharpest political minds in Washington. Sam was the youngest and only female lawyer at a prestigious firm but was proving to be of the same caliber as any of the older males (she was better).

Their friendship grew even more special, as Josh heard Sam break down over the phone because she was doing twice the amount of work her male counterparts were doing with half the acknowledgement or benefits, and Sam helped Josh through his self-destructive rage when policies that were genuinely for the good of the people got shut down.

Josh started keeping a picture of the two of them on his desk. A mutual friend had taken it when their group of friends had gone to dinner. They were holding hands and laughing at each other, and Josh looked at Sam’s smiling face whenever he needed to remind himself to keep striving, and to indulge in the occasional bout of idealism. Sam had the same picture in her office, and looked at Josh whenever she needed a reminder to think about the bigger picture, and to work more analytically.

* * *

When Josh got a phone call from Sam at three in the morning on a Saturday, he knew something was wrong. She usually would only text when she was super drunk after a party or a night at the bar. A call that early in the morning, and on a Saturday, was unusual.

If it were anyone else, he wouldn’t have picked up, it was one of his precious days off. He was only awake because he wanted to reread some reports from that week. But this was Sam, and Sam was special. When he answered, he was even more certain that something was wrong. Usually, Sam would greet him sunnily with a bad joke or launch straight into a story. This time, he heard her exhale in relief, and sniffle.

“Are you crying? Sam, what’s wrong?”

Her only response was to cry harder. “Josh,” she managed to get out, before the sobs took her voice away.

“Sam, honey, I need you to breathe with me.” Josh was really worried now.

He heard her intakes of breath as she tried to match the deep breathing pattern he was following. It took her about twenty minutes to even remotely slow down her rapid, shallow breaths.

“Sammy, what’s going on? Where are you?” Josh dared to ask once the sobs seemed to have settled.

“I’m— I’m in my apartment,” she stuttered out.

“Are you safe?”

“I, um, I think I am. Now at least. Oh God, I can’t, I don’t know if I’m safe. Oh God—”

“Sam, breathe. Take however long you need. Tell me however much you want to. I’m here.” Josh was speaking impossibly gently, as if to a wounded animal.

Time passed, and all Josh could hear was Sam crying softly. Eventually, she began to speak. She told him about the dinner party her boss had invited everyone in the office to. She had felt so pretty in the dark green dress she wore, with her hair in a complicated updo that had taken her about an hour to get right. Dinner had gone well, she had been involved in the conversation, and people had laughed at her jokes. It was all fine until they had brought out the whiskey after dinner, and everyone started drinking.

Sam had excused herself to the restroom so that she could take a break from the drunken locker room-esque conversation that her male colleagues were engaging in. She had splashed some water on her face, unaware that someone had entered the room after her.

John was drunk, but he weighed probably twice as much as her, and Sam wasn’t completely sober herself. He had grabbed her, and touched her, and put his hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming while he had his way with her. She didn’t know how long it had lasted, but when it was over John left and she had sunk to the ground in a practically catatonic state.

She felt like she was floating outside of her body, and she watched herself go out and quickly excuse herself. She watched herself call a cab and go back to her apartment, where she had ripped off the dress (dirty, it was forever tainted by what he had done to her while she was in it) and sat under the shower until it ran out of hot water.

She told Josh all of this, and he stayed silent, mind reeling after hearing what his brave, beautiful, smart friend had suffered through, at the hands of someone she knew. She sounded so broken, and he didn’t know how to help her.

A minute after she finished, the first thing he said was “That fucking bastard.”

The second thing he said was “I’m taking the first train over.”

* * *

True to his word, Josh had taken the train over and managed to swing a week off of work (he said it was a family emergency, which was basically true). When Sam had opened the apartment door and flinched away from him, he had been taken aback by how small she looked. Sam had always had a presence that made her seem larger than life, and now, she just seemed drained.

After he closed the door behind him, she threw herself into his arms, and he held her while she cried.

That week, Josh stayed with Sam as she came to terms with everything. He helped her put in her notice with Dewey Ballentine (neither one of them could stomach the idea of her going back to work with that douchebag there) and tried to persuade her to press charges. She adamantly refused, because although it was horrible, her career would be ruined if she even thought about doing something like that.

He helped her sort through her job options. It helped that she had been getting offers from competing firms ever since she started making her mark at Dewey Ballentine. He helped her negotiate an excellent contract with Gage Whitney Pace.

Beyond sorting out the material aspects, he tried his best to help her heal mentally. Obviously, he was no expert in dealing with emotions, but for Sam, he tried his best. He held her while she cried, whispered loving reassurances into her ear, forced her to eat, even when she didn’t want to, and was there for her.

By the end of the week, Sam wasn’t all right, not by a longshot. But she was doing better, and although Josh offered to stay, she made him leave, saying that she wouldn’t be able to let him go back if he stayed any longer.

In the following months, Sam started running and going to the gym. She took up boxing and started eating better. She did anything she could to make herself stronger. She was determined never to let anyone overpower her again. She figured that there were worse coping mechanisms out there.

Josh still worried about her, but Sam did everything she could to dissuade him, and the fact that she looked better than ever helped project the image that she was all right. He worked so hard; Sam didn’t want to be a bother.

Josh was becoming infamous on the Hill and Sam was so proud of him. Josh was born for politics, it was his element, and watching him work was like watching an artist paint a masterpiece.

He constantly reminded her that she always had a place in his studio if she wanted. She could be a part of whatever paintings he was creating. But, Sam held out, telling Josh that she would only be able to handle the stains on her conscious that she was sure would come from working in D.C. for “The Real Deal,” not some random Congressman who didn’t even care enough about the issues to take a stance. It was slightly hypocritical, considering she compromised on her ideals and principles a little bit more very day she worked at Gage Whitney, but at least her actions there wouldn’t affect the entire country.

* * *

When Sam called Josh to tell him about her first date with some guy named Liam, he was mainly concerned about whether or not she was ok, and if she was pushing herself too far too fast. When she called about the second date, she sounded so happy, and so he was happy (he ignored the pang in his chest at the thought of Sam going out with someone, it was probably just a caffeine induced heart palpitation).

The calls about Liam didn’t stop like Josh had expected. Instead, they grew more frequent, and got to the point where during the times in their usual phone calls that were reserved for Sam talking about what was going on her life consisted of only talk about Liam Sherborne. Josh couldn’t help but dislike the guy, in spite of how much he told himself he wanted to support Sam’s choices.

Based on what Sam said, it seemed like all he cared about were appearances and the New York social scene. He seemed to like when Sam spent inordinate amounts of money taking them to cool new restaurants where the social elites hung out, or wore all the latest trendy clothing, regardless of whether it fit her actual style. Sam didn’t seem to notice, however, and so Josh told himself that he was making stuff up, and that he should let her be happy.

Besides, it isn’t like Josh wasn’t dating anyone either. It seemed like he went out with a different girl each month, driving them away with a burst of asshole-ishness when things were on the verge of getting more serious. When Sam heard about his exploits, she just shook her head and sighed, “What am I going to do with you Joshua?”

* * *

Things continued in this fashion for a while, and Sam missed Josh and Josh missed Sam, but their jobs kept them away from each other, so they continued to make do with their phone calls and emails (much to the chagrin of Liam, but Sam refused to cut ties with Josh just because Liam was insecure).

Then, Josh started working for Hoynes. He was finally on a campaign that had a chance of winning. Josh had dreamed of the White House before he even knew what it was, and now, he was closer than ever. The only problem was that Josh wasn’t satisfied working for Hoynes. He wasn’t it, he wasn’t “The Guy.”

As soon as Josh started working for the campaign, he knew he wanted Sam to join him. Her words, her idealism, her intelligence, her legal expertise (let’s be real, Josh was a lawyer in name only), just _Her_ , was exactly what Josh needed at his side.

Sam knew that Josh would ask her at some point to join him with Hoynes, but she also knew that she couldn’t go back into politics for anything less than “The Real Thing.” She was doing well at Gage Whitney, and she and Liam were going great (she didn’t feel great when she was around him when he was angry), and she had no desire to uproot her life.

In fact, Liam had proposed to her last night at dinner with a ring that probably cost as much as she made in a year (she was a top lawyer at an exclusive firm, she made quite a bit) and she had said yes (not without hesitation). She was planning to call Josh today and tell him. So, she sat in a conference room, discussing the finer points of oil tanker insurance with one of the partners and her client’s representative, with no expectations of anything unusual happening that day. That expectation was done for as soon as her secretary walked up to her and said “Sam, there's a guy waiting in your office who said he's a friend of yours.”

Sam’s eyebrows shot upwards. She wasn’t expecting anyone today, much less a visit from a friend. She tried to think about who in New York would be visiting her at 9:30 in the morning on a workday. “What's his name?”

“Josh Lyman?” her secretary replied uncertainly.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

Sam was so shocked that she could barely keep herself from running over to her office, so her steps were definitely quite a bit more hurried that usual, and it took all of her composure to keep the grin that was threatening to make an appearance off of her face. She opened the door to her office, and quickly scanned the room, almost immediately focusing on the tall figure that stood in the center.

“Hey!” she cried out.

“How you doing?” Josh gave her one of his characteristic smirks, and she shut the door as he started walking towards her. He swept her up into a hug and she sighed as she pulled him closer.

“I missed you so much,” she whispered softly.

“I missed you more,” he whispered back. They stood like that for a moment, relishing in the feeling of rightness that accompanied their interactions. All thoughts of why Josh would be here left Sam as she hugged her closest friend.

Finally, they pulled away from each other (reluctantly). “Hey, you look fit,” Sam couldn’t help but comment after giving Josh a quick onceover. It was a little bit of an inside joke between the two of them, but Sam couldn’t help but think to herself that it wasn’t an inaccurate statement. He looked tired and slightly rumpled from the work he had been putting into the campaign and his recent travel, but he looked exceptionally good.

“You made partner?’ Josh grinned, proud of her achievements in a field that had been consistently determined to underestimate and undervalue her.

“Next month. Listen, I'm hungry. You want to go grab a hot dog or something?” Sam knew that it was a strange request, but she also knew that Josh would pick up on what was going on. Firstly, Sam wanted to get out of the office and talk to her best friend. Secondly, Josh knew that when Sam went on a work bender, she tended not to eat. He could therefore conclude that Sam wanted to hang out with him outside of the office, and upon making herself leave, she realized that she hadn’t eaten anything for at least a day if he was guessing right, and felt like she could use a hot dog.

Still, he couldn’t just let it go. “It's 9:30 in the morning,” he halfheartedly protested.

“Yeah, they'll be fresh. Come on,” Sam looked at him with a slightly pleading expression, and he gave in (as if he hadn’t already resigned himself to the fact that he would be eating hot dogs with her at 9:30 in the morning as soon as she had suggested it).

“Okay,” he said.

As they walked, they chatted, falling easily back into their unique pattern of conversation, riddled with inside jokes. They got their hot dogs, and Josh tried to hide his smile when he saw how quickly Sam devoured hers; it seems like her eating and work habits hadn’t changed that much since her congressional aide days.

“So, what do I owe the pleasure of Josh Lyman’s surprise appearance in my office today to?” Sam suddenly asked.

“Yeah, I was going to call before I came here, but then the strangest thing happened,” Josh hesitated, looking sheepish.

“What?”

“I forgot the name of your firm.” At this, Josh fully ducked his head, embarrassed.

“Gage Whitney,” Sam said slightly incredulously. Her friend had gone to law school, and was one of the smartest people she knew, but he couldn’t remember Gage Whitney.

“Yeah.”

“You couldn't remember Gage Whitney.”

“I know,” Josh’s hand buried itself in his already disheveled curls, messing them up even further.

“Second biggest firm in New York?” Sam was almost full out laughing at this point.

“I know.”

“Did the Shearson deal…”

“Yeah,” Josh sighed.

“Bought Transcom…”

“I really do know Gage Whitney. I'm saying, I'm just, um, I'm um, having a brain problem.”

Upon hearing the slight distress in Josh’s voice, Sam frowned. He must’ve been having a harder time managing all the campaign stuff than his appearance had originally implied. “What are you doing in town?” she finally asked.

“I'm on my way to Nashua.”

“What's in Nashua?” Sam was totally lost at that, she couldn’t imagine what he possibly needed to do in Nashua of places.

“Ah, a waste of time. Listen. You know why I'm here,” he finally got to the point.

“You want me to quit my job and come work for Hoynes?”

“He's gonna win, Sam,” he said, as if she didn’t know that. The problem was, she did know that Hoynes was going to win, but she knew he wasn’t “The Guy.”

“So what do you need me for?”

“A better campaign. Come do some speech writing,” he said. Sam had always had a way with words, and her words would take any campaign to the next level. He remembered how her writing could make even the most uninspiring Congressman sound like a visionary.

Sam decided that now was the time to tell him. “Liam and I are getting married in September. He proposed yesterday.”

They stopped walking. Josh looked at her hand with a shocked expression, noticing the obnoxiously large ring that sat on her finger. “Ah,” he breathed out.

Sam grinned at him, “Yeah!”

Josh ducked his head, trying to hide what he was feeling (he didn’t even know what he was feeling). He stumbled on his words, not sure if he could even get the congratulations out. “Okay. Listen, I should go, I got to go. I should let you—”

“I’ve got to get back to this thing,” Sam saved him, slightly confused with his unemotional reaction to the news. She knew that Liam didn’t like Josh and vice versa, but wasn’t sure what the issue really was.

“It's good seeing you,” Josh said finally. Both of them were sad that they had to get back to their respective jobs, but it was really just a symbolic parting (both of them knew that they would be on the phone for at least an hour later tonight to talk about Sam’s engagement and everything else in life).

“It's good seeing you. I miss you,” Sam said.

They both started to walk away from each other, when Josh suddenly turned and grabbed her arm. “Hey, congratulations on that partnership,” he said sincerely as he moved his hand to grab hers.

Still holding on, Sam turned all the way towards Josh so she could look him in the eyes. “Hoynes. He's not the ‘Real Thing,’ is he?”

“See, that-the thing you gotta know about Hoynes is—"

Sam cut him off, “it's okay.”

“I-I'm saying—” Josh tried to dig himself out of the hole he was digging for himself and for his candidate (why did he hate thinking of Hoynes as his candidate).

“Josh,” she paused, “what are you doing?”

“I don't know. What are you doing?” Josh threw back at her, knowing that she wasn’t happy with the moral compromises she had to make for her job as well.

“Protecting oil companies from litigation,” Sam said with a sigh. Josh nodded to emphasize his point.

“They're our client. They don't lose legal protection because they make a lot of money,” Sam tried to justify.

“I can't believe no one ever wrote a folk song about that,” Josh quipped. Sam just smiled at him in return.

“If I see the real thing in Nashua, should I tell you about it?” Josh asked hopefully, not wanting to let go of his and Sam’s original dream way back when they were just lowly D.C. staffers, hoping to change the world together.

“You won't have to,” Sam replied.

Josh was confused. “Why?”

“You've got a pretty bad poker face.” They both laughed a little at that, knowing that it was true.

“Okay,” Josh said, knowing that both of them were doing their best to prolong their reparation, “take it easy.”

“Okay,” Sam said with a smile.

* * *

The next morning found Sam in a decidedly worse mood. She had spent the rest of the day thinking over Josh’s words while ironing out the kinks of this oil company contract. Then, when she had gotten home, she and Liam had gotten into a huge argument over the fact that Josh had visited and that she had heavily implied that she would work on a campaign with him if he found the right candidate. It had been a culmination of seemingly all of his frustrations with her over things she hadn’t even thought were problems. He was angry that she spent so much time at work and not enough time with his friends (her work was how they afforded to go out with his friends), and how she didn’t look like his colleagues’ dates and that she didn’t spend enough time on her appearance, and that she always talked about such boring things that nobody else cared about (Josh liked her nerdy rants). It was absolutely horrible, and by the end of it, Sam had taken off her ring and told Liam that maybe they needed to reconsider their engagement. Needless to say, she didn’t get a lot of sleep that night (she took the couch), and was having an awful day.

That morning, she had come into the office early to go over her contract notes after a restless night full of overthinking and soul searching, when she allowed herself to give into her idealism and push. She decided that she was going to push for the company to buy better ships, because as they said in her days as a congressional aide, “'no idea is too stupid to say out loud.” Sam knew that she could do better, that the company could do better, and it killed her that they wouldn’t, just to save money that they had in excess.

As she sat in that meeting and pushed for something better, with her boss and the company representative shooting her down, she knew that she couldn’t do this anymore. She needed to do something better, she wanted to be better. Mr. Gage had finally had enough of her listening to her better angels and took her outside to chastise her before dragging the both of them back into the meeting.

* * *

Josh had an enlightening, life-changing night. Bartlet was the "Real Thing". If he wasn’t sure about it based on Leo’s recommendation, he was sure now. So, Josh was standing outside in the rain, on a pay phone, trying to call Sam to tell her that he needed her.

“Look, Operator, I'm looking for the number of a law firm in Manhattan. Here's the thing, I can't quite remember the name of the firm...”

“No, wait, wait, wait! I just came back from New Hampshire, where I saw this guy and now I have to... look it's a very famous firm that handles Shearson, you must know... okay, you know what, I'm just going to— okay, bye.” He was absolutely losing it. He always lost it a little bit when it came to Sam, but he was just so excited and caffeinated and tired all at once.

He hung up the phone, ran to curb, and stood for a second. Then, he remembered, and took off running in the other direction. Josh Lyman, as a rule, does not run (unless it is for Sam Seaborn, she was special).

Meanwhile, Sam was still in the conference room struggling to keep her cool. She couldn’t pay much attention, but she wanted to give her plan one more shot. She started her final appeal, not stopping when the other lawyers in the room tried to shut her up. She just knew that this was something that she had to do. Right after a shout of her name from her boss, they all heard a knock on the window.

It was Josh, just standing there, soaking wet and looking vaguely prophetic. Sam couldn’t take her eyes off of him. As she stared at her best friend, she started smiling slightly, not paying attention to the frustrated utterings her boss and colleagues were directing towards her. She watched as Josh pointed to his non-poker-playing face. Sam, still half-not-really-listening and just saying “yeah,” in response to whatever was being said in the meeting. She watched as Josh, still pointing to his face, smiled stupidly, and nodded slowly. Sam started laughing.

She started shuffling her papers around, and pushed them away from her. “I'm not going to need that.”

“Sam? Sam! Sam, please keep your seat! Sam, where are you going?” Mr. Gage cried as Sam got up from the table and walked towards the door. Josh opened the door for her, and as she walked out, she turned back and said “New Hampshire!”

She and Josh left the office together, both of them laughing like crazy people. She explained her situation with Liam quickly, and Josh hugged her tight. He walked over to her apartment with her and helped as she packed up her things and left a message for Liam.

Now, it was off to New Hampshire to actually meet Governor Bartlet and his team. Sam was nervous, but she knew that she could do it as long as Josh was at her side.


End file.
